I found myself down a rabbit hole yesterday.

I was casually watching an older medical K-drama when a disease was introduced. A disease I hadn't heard about till that moment,that intrigued me. So I went out of my way to stop the kdrama and research it.

CIPA is a disease that makes you unable to feel physical pain.And you are born with it. You can't get it. And it's constant, continues . It never takes a break. I think most of you can understand now why I was intrigued by it.

I started thinking about it. Is there any other way someone can be unable to feel physical pain, other than this disease. Something one could get later in life. And I found that there are ways, they just ain't constant and they don't last a lifetime, like CIPA does.

Pain delays can occur,after traumas or accidents. Nerves gets cut or blocked so the pain receptors fail to deliver the pain message to the brain hence you end up not feeling it at all.

I went in deeper, looking at such cases till I found a psychological dissociation that did the same even though no nerves were damaged or blocked. It filters out the message of pain. The nerves still work. The brain is just not letting the signal reach conscious awareness.

The brain itself choses on its own to remove the pain signal and discard it, because it knows it cannot withstand it. It's a survival mechanism.

As someone that writes about pain a lot and is interested in psychological consequences of things, my mind couldn't leave me alone, so I dug deeper, trying to find if a psychological dissociation could happen to someone with a multiple personalities disorder.

This is one of the most documented phenomena in dissociative disorders apparently. The fact that there's dramatic changes on how a personality perceives pain. Different than the other, despite sharing the same brain, the same body.

For example, one identity feels extreme pain.Another feels almost none.
Another feels pain but no fear and another feels nothing at all.
Same body. Same nerves. Different brain states.

Brain imaging studies show that different identities activate different sensory pathways.
The brain literally routes pain differently based on personality.

How crazy is that?

I was left buffled for a moment. Thinking about it.

If our personality matters literally on how we perceive the world and how we live our lives, then personality is so important. So important to the point that I had to ask myself, how much control do I have over the creation of my own personality.

If my brain creates a whole new pathway based on my personality, then personality is key to a huge part of our lives and the way we suffer and exist.

How much of that is our say? How much of who we are is a result of our own will?Do we shape it or are we born with it?

Personality is determined by so many factors.  Biologically we are born with it to a point.

Temperament (sensitivity, impulsivity, emotional intensity) Our nervous system thresholds (stress, pain, fear, pleasure)
Our predispositions (introversion extroversion, anxiety, resilience). All those things, are determined from birth and we have no say in it. We cannot change them. We aren't born as a blank canvas.

Let's consider that for the sake of the thinking process as a 50% base to be biologically wired genes.

However we also shape our personality at will, by making repeated choices
coping mechanisms, meaning we assign to experiences and narratives we tell about ourselves (“I am this kind of person”)

We influence ourselves and mold us.

Let's put that part as the other 50%.
So one could say we have a 50% say in who we are and our personality hence a 50% say on the neurological pathway we create in our brain and how we perceive the world.

We can say, we have our own destiny in our hand, by 50%.

But truth be, it's less than that. Why? Cause we don't mold ourselves. Others do. Most of our personality has been created since childhood and we have been influenced since birth. All these things happen from external sources.

We don’t choose who raises us, how love is shown or withheld from us, how conflict is handled or what fear feels like. We don't decide for ourselves what “normal” looks like. Our parents do. People around us do. Society does.

They tell you how to be, what is wrong and what is right, acceptable or not. So from that 50% let's say 30% is in the hands of someone other than us. To be molded. Because we have no autonomy in childhood and no capacity to think for ourselves.

From that we are left with 20% freedom. 20% say on how to create our own personality. How to mold ourselves.

20% isn't so bad right? Well that's until you start thinking that influence doesn't end in childhood.

There's people that by then, they won't question anything. They will identify with the claims others have put on them so far. If someone has been called lazy all their childhood, they will believe they are lazy and they will carry that even after. They will identify themselves with it. With claims someone else made.

If you have been bullied for example, you will go around life having in the back of your mind, the words of your bullies. Partially believing them and partially going through life looking at your actions and judging yourself to prove those claims right.

Oh I really am ugly. Oh I really am stupid. Oh this isn't for me. As always I messed up. All those kinda words, they are all an echo of someone else's voice. They are the prints of someone else's hands on your mold.

So that 20% isn't clean. It can be 10%, or even less, depending on people.

10% percent of having a personal say on who you are. Feels like a crack on a wall already built.

It made me realize why I crave freedom so much. And how truly difficult it can be to get it.

Not because it doesn't exist, but because we are molded in a way that it's hard for us to find it.

Many won't. Many will never have the chance to design their own selves. To find who they truly are. Many will remain stuck, to perceive the world how people and circumstances build them to live it. And maybe that is what we call destiny, or fate. Maybe that's what we aim to break. What we want control over.

We say the apple won't fall far from the tree, because we were molded to be apples. So we will behave like an apple, think like an apple, exist and waste ourselves the same way. Many won't even notice. What happened? How it happened?

But the ones that will find their crack, will find the key to creation. To having a say on your own identity.

The one who realizes, thinks, searching. The one that starts bother that crack till the wall ends up having a hole. That one will see himself for who they truly are. And will mold themselves to their true selves.

Of course not everyone can do it, because some are comfortable with who others molded them to be. They don't question themselves nor challenge themselves. They are afraid to know their own being.

And I understand that. Even if you were to be looking for that crack,that freedom, there's no guarantee that you will find it. The lifetime we have left may be too little to undo all the things that influenced us.

Our traumas, our experiences, our morals, our societal obligations. Everything we identify ourselves with, even if it didn't come from us. And we accept it as true cause we are convinced.

It's hard to imagine, what would our opinion be if no one had ever influenced us on anything.

Humans as always are too deep and complex. Sure I won't be the one to solve it. But despite the fact that all this finds, can make some feel like they are hopeless and powerless with little to no free will, ultimately, I don't see it like that.

Because despite the unfair part of it all. I realized why freedom is wanted so much and what it truly is in this context. Freedom is not choosing your starting point, freedom is choosing how tightly you obey it.

We don't choose where we are born, to who we are born. We don't choose what we are taught. But from the moment you choose to question it. To doubt it, to search for it. From the moment you chase critical thinking, you are unknowingly walking on the path of reformation. Rebirth. Recreation.

You are heading towards freedom and towards knowledge. You are on your way to meet who you are under all the blankets of thoughts and opinions that others wrapped you under.

And by doing that, you will change your personality and by changing that you will be literally making your brain create a whole new neurological pathway for you. How fascinating is that?

How crazy? That we have the power to be us and so different from what we are, even now.

I  don't know how all this spiral may sound to you all. But to me it's been so impactful.  And I don't know if I can even explain it well enough.

But the possibility that my real self may not be someone that thinks about dying every day, someone that has not passed most of their lives wishing for it to end, someone who doesn't have the labels I do. The fact that I was molded into someone that maybe I wasn't meant to be, is hopeful to me.

Not because it's easy to undo it but because it's comforting. That no matter what they see, no matter what they judge, no matter what they destroy of me, it's just a reflection of their own teaching. They will never be able to touch me truly. Because they don't even know that I exist.

Maybe you will need a bit of insanity to grasp what I mean. Maybe you may need a lot of it. But who cares, it's just one more random trail of thoughts.

One I really enjoyed even without an outcome.